a brisk young man met with a maid
by Yami no Ryu
Summary: To Emma, the best person in the world is her brother. She'll wait forever for him to come back to her, if she has to.
1. you must love me 'cause I love you

**Warnings:** Character death, obsession, sibling incest (onesided Jack/Jack's sister). This is not a happy story. Read at your own risk.

* * *

There is a boy at the edge of her pond. She rises up, just enough, just so her eyes break the waterline and she can see him free from distortion. For a moment she waits, waits for the spark of not-Jack, waits for the rage that is never far away. It's slow in coming.

The boy is Jack's height, willowy like Jack though it's harder to tell through the baggy blue jacket he wears. He's pale, too pale, and her Jack was always warm-nut-brown, even in winter, tanned from the sun and dirt-streaked from his latest little mischief. His hair is beautiful, the same bird's-nest fall as Jack's, but frosted over with white where her Jack's was summer-loam brown.

So close.

He is so close to her Jack that she can't help but rise up, whisper, "Jack," like a prayer, like if he turns around he will suddenly be her Jack, warm and alive and so present it hurts. He does turn. He looks _so much _like Jack, down to the angle of his jaw and the tilt of his eyebrows. He's even barefoot. None of the other fakes were barefoot.

He looks shocked, eyes so wide she can see white around his irises. He breathes, "Emma?"

His eyes are blue. His hair is white. His skin is pale. He's not her Jack.

And she is _furious_, more furious than she's ever been. How dare he? How dare he come here and _not be Jack_? She jumps at him, arms extended and fingers like claws, wailing high and thin like the wind through winter-bare trees, "Imposter! Fake! Liar! Liar! How dare you?"

Behind her, the ice on the pond cracks and refreezes into deadly swathes of sharp spikes. A sudden wind springs up, rattling through the trees, ripping the last few dead leaves from their branches. The air chills noticeably. She wants nothing more than to drag him beneath the pond's surface, to watch water fill his lungs with winter, to watch him struggle and fade, as is only right for liars.

The fake raises his shepherd's crook (and oh, it's so like her brother's, how dare he, how dare he), tapping her with the curved outside edge and shouting, "Stop!"

She freezes in midair, her only contact the wood of the staff; the wind quiets, leaves floating down to the ground; the unnatural chill leaves the air. The fake stares at her, some unknown emotion crossing his face, confusion and something else, something warmer.

_He looks like Jack_.

He says again, timbre and intonation lifted straight from her memories, "Emma? Is that you? Little sister?"

She can't say anything, his magic gripping her as tightly as cold grips the poles—not that she would if she could. She doesn't understand: how can he sound like her Jack, look so much like her Jack, and yet get the details so disgustingly _wrong_?

He reaches out as if to cradle her cheek, studying her with those clear blue eyes. He must see her glare, though, because his fingers flutter close to her skin but do not touch. Even that's wrong: there is no warmth from his proximity, and her Jack was always so warm.

"You look older," he says softly, "but I'd recognize those eyes anywhere." A grin flirts with his blue-tinged lips, and he adds, "I know I look different, too. It's been a while, huh, Emma?"

The way he says her name…how she'd longed to hear her name said like that. She can almost believe it _is_ her Jack. If she closed her eyes and only heard him speak, she would swear he is her brother.

He looks so hopeful, so like Jack had when asking their mother for permission to play in the snow after chores were done.

"Emma, please. Don't you remember me?"

He releases her from his magic, perhaps seeing her calming emotions or perhaps sensing them. What if this _is_ her brother? What if his time away changed him, even so much, just as it changed her? She thinks she looks different, her hair longer and scraggly where it used to be straight and clean (she remembers, at night before bed, she and Jack would sit before the fire and he would brush it out and sing to her—he only ever sang to _her_—and sometimes when she had trouble sleeping he would sit next to her and run his fingers through the strands), and her dress is sodden and stained. She feels suddenly shy, brushing her skirt straight, tucking her hair behind her ears. If this is Jack—it _could be_ her Jack—she doesn't want to be seen so slovenly. Her mother always taught her to be clean and neat, and Jack always smiled so big for her when she dressed up on festival days.

She looks at him from beneath her lashes. Really, if he wasn't so pale all over, he could be her brother.

"Jack?" she asks tentatively, nothing like the howl the other lying boys would have heard.

The boy nods and his grin widens, showing straight white teeth. Jack had had abnormally good teeth; he joked that if he sat for a portrait he wouldn't have to be such a serious stiff. Hope rises in her, such a foreign, burning thing. Maybe…

"If you are Jack," she says, "sing for me. My Jack used to sing to me at night."

He bites the inside of his lip for a moment, eyes going clear and distant. Doubt immediately begins to choke the hope: if he has to think about it, he isn't her Jack. Then his face brightens, and he nods.

"Right, I remember now. Hey, you liked this one, right?" And then he begins to sing:

_Lavender's blue, diddle diddle_

_Lavender's green_

_When I am king, diddle diddle_

_You shall be queen_

_Lavender's green, diddle diddle_

_Lavender's blue_

_You must love me, diddle diddle_

'_Cause I love you_

It's her favorite song.

He's her Jack.

She throws herself at her brother, her arms going around his neck. They're of a height, now. He used to be taller than her; she would have to look up to see his smile, or sometimes when he really wanted her to listen he would go down to one knee to look her in the eyes. But _this is her brother_, this is her Jack, and so she pushes the nagging doubt away.

Jack laughs, the same bright sound like daffodils bobbing in a spring breeze. His arms go around her shoulders. He squeezes and she clings, burying her face into the strangely soft fabric of his coat. (He doesn't smell like Jack; he smells like crisp snow and the air before a storm.) But he's here, he's here, and that's what matters.

"Jack," she breathes into his shoulder. "I love you. I missed you so much."

He clutches her a bit tighter. "I'm here, Emma."

"I knew you'd come back," she says, turning her head to press her lips to the side of his neck. "I waited. I never stopped waiting. Momma said that you'd gone to Heaven, but I knew she was lying. You'd never leave me."

He draws back slightly, but she's reluctant to release him. She presses closer and pretends she can smell dirt and sweat and the sheep he herded (herds). His voice rumbles in his chest, vibrates into her from where her lips linger. He asks, "What do you mean?"

"You said everything would be okay, and you saved me from falling. But then you went away. But you said everything would be okay, so I waited for you to come back." He had to come back so that everything would be okay, or else he would have lied, and her Jack never was a liar, not about the important things.

"Emma, let go. I want to see your eyes," he says softly. Slowly, she draws away. Her hands linger on his arms, lanky but lithe, muscles shifting as he grasps her forearms. He asks, "You've been waiting for me here, by this lake, all these years?"

She's a bit puzzled by the question. Where else would she have waited for him? This is where he left: this is where he'll come back to. But she nods.

He looks frustrated and confused. "This lake?" She nods again, starting to become irritated. (Her Jack is quicker on the uptake than this.) "But that's impossible. I've been here…I mean, this is _my_ lake. How can I not have seen you before?"

"You've never been here before," she says with certainty. There are other boys who have come, and pretended to be Jack to try to fool her, and she keeps their bones company at the bottom of the lake. But her Jack has never been here before. "Other boys, but not you."

His eyes stare into hers with crystal intensity. "Other boys," he echoes. "Did you attack them like you attacked me earlier?"

"I'm sorry," she apologizes. "I didn't know it was you."

"But if I hadn't been me—"

Her eyes darken, and the wind picks up just a bit, enough to rattle some of the tree branches. "A lot of boys have tried to trick me. Make me think they were you. But they weren't, they lied to me, so I punished them."

There's a strange emotion dawning in his eyes, hot and sharp like the fire from a forge. He looked that way when Papa had his accident and everyone realized the wound had gone bad. She thinks it might be horror, but that doesn't make any sense. He's her Jack—he would never look at her with that hot-sharp look. "Emma, what did you do?"

"They keep me company at the bottom of the lake," she says matter-of-factly. She adds, with a certain satisfaction, "They won't lie to anyone again. I make sure of that."

He lets go of her and tries to step back, but she grips his arms with hands that have drowned many boys. He his lips press and twist like he's going to be sick, and she doesn't understand. Jack didn't look sick even when he was killing the rabbits he caught in his traps, and the rabbits hadn't done anything like those boys had. "You hate liars too. I remember, you told me, lies only hurt people and I shouldn't lie."

"Emma, you can't kill people because they _lie_ to you!" he exclaims. He jerks like he's trying to get away from her but she hangs on stubbornly. Why is he trying to get away? "Emma, let me go!"

"Why are you trying to get away?" she asks plaintively, instead of responding to his previous statement. Responding to his silliness only encourages him. He only went too far with his jokes when he was being encouraged, and this can only be a joke. "Stop playing around."

He uses the shepherd's crook to break her grip. She cries out, not at the pain of the strike, but because she's not touching him anymore. He's already hovering off the ground. He's going to leave again, and that's not acceptable.

She lunges desperately and manages to snag his free hand. She pulls herself close, grabs the back of his neck. She whispers, begs, "Don't leave me! I love you."

She kisses him.

It's like she imagined it, almost: his lips are chapped and soft, malleable under her own, but cold where she imagined warmth. His hair is fine between her fingers, his neck strong but oddly tense. And instead of kissing back, he breaks away all too soon.

He's out of her reach before she can blink, her hand burning with cold and her fingers stiff with it. He's hovering by the trees that border the lake, scrubbing at his lips with the wrist of his jacket, his eyes wide and blank, pupils tightened down to pinpricks.

His eyes are so (wrong) blue.

That hot-sharp look is back, and it is horror, but her brother, her Jack, would never look at her that way. Her Jack would never twist in the air and fly away without a word. Her Jack would never _leave her_.

He's not her Jack after all.

He lied to her.

She wants to follow him into the sky and drag him by the throat down into the lake with all the other lying boys. She settles for hurling invectives after him until he's out of sight. If he ever comes back, she'll drown him. That decided, she sinks back into her lake to wait for Jack.

She'll wait forever for her Jack.

* * *

The song is "Lavender's Blue," a folk song popular in 1700s New England. The story and chapter title is taken from the same song.


	2. epilogue

Miles away, Jack falls to the ground, nausea finally overcoming him. He still feels like he's too close to the lake—the other side of the globe would still be too close—but dry heaves shake his body and he has to land. It seems like the painful contractions go on forever, but eventually Jack is able to sit up.

He uses a handful of snow to wash out his mouth, and another to scrub at his lips until they feel raw. The roiling sick feeling doesn't leave his stomach.

He'd found her, Emma, his little sister. How had everything gone so wrong?

It had seemed an unlooked-for miracle. After having forgotten his sister for so long—for which he would always feel guilty—to have her there suddenly, visible and tangible and reactionary…but then he began to notice certain things.

She looked barely sixteen.

Her hair was tangled and water dripped from the ends, despite the cold.

Her thick wool dress was soaked.

Her skin was pale and dark bruises rimmed her eyes.

But he ignored the warning signs at first, too blindsided by _his sister_. He could make up for all those years he'd forgotten her! They could go skating, and he could take her flying, and they could build snowmen and start snowball fights, and they could make icicles and frost patterns together. He could share the joy of winter with his little sister, like he had done three hundred years ago. It seemed too good to be true.

It was.

"_A lot of boys have tried to trick me. Make me think they were you. But they weren't, they lied to me, so I punished them."_

"_Don't leave me! I love you."_

The worst part is, despite the violence and the obsession, she's still his sister. Or she had been, at one time, in the same way that he had been Jackson Overland. This is Emma, twisted by grief and madness.

Jack presses his face into a snowdrift, hiding his tears as he grieves for a sister that has lingered too long. He grieves, for the first time, the loss of his own life, and for the pain he put his family through. And he grieves all the might-have-beens.

Then he squares his shoulders and launches himself into the air, heading toward the North Pole. Whatever else she is, the spirit in his lake is dangerous and she needs to be stopped before she drowns another innocent boy.

But Jack is not alone, now. The other Guardians can help him with this, and maybe mourn with him when it's over.


End file.
